Q: How are you different from other agencies?

Our Qualifications and Experience : We’ve been successfully at this since 2006 Google Ads certified Hubspot Certified Partners Digital Marketer Certified Partners Google Ads Partners Our Ads team is a Google Ads Premier Partner Forbes Agency Council Members Named one of the Best Digital Marketing Agencies in Phoenix by Expertise We are digital marketers; however, we specialize in PPC ...and get a load of our case studies Our Tracking and Reporting Methods : We only use Google Analytics and Google Data Studio Monthly reporting and tracking methods are easy to understand We never use proprietary reporting or dashboards where data can be manipulated or hidden Our Communication, Pricing, and Transparency : You always maintain administrative ownership of your accounts There is always a primary contact in charge of your campaign (i.e. a dedicated client manager) We have clear communication schedules We are clear on the work you need to contribute (and what your time investment will be) Our fees are transparent and there are no long-term contracts Our Strategy, Setup, and Tools : We have a rock-solid onboarding process We take the time to understand your business before offering a solution We offer a marketing strategy in addition to tactical, campaign-based recommendations We are clear about the tools and software we use We don’t use automated tools to manage our campaigns — everything is done manually Our Culture : We work with clients who reflect our values and work ethic We have the brand recognition necessary to pull in (and retain) top talent We care. A lot.

Q: How did you create the estimated projections in the action plan?

Using tools such as Google Keyword Planner , iSpionage , SpyFu , and SEMrush , we craft a keyword strategy. Next, we: Add the total monthly impressions of those keywords Divide that number by a standard 2% click-through rate Multiply that by the keywords’ average cost-per-click This will give you a total amount of monthly leads/sales and cost-per-lead/sale.

Question 1

Adding Solutions 8 to your Google Ads account

Accepted Answer

To begin, we’ll need you to send us your 10-digit Google Ads Customer ID. Please send this information directly to your Solutions 8 contact requesting this.

Here is a screenshot of where to look for the ID in your Google Ads Account:

https://malcolm-en-gb.s3.eu-west-1.amazonaws.com/instances/MpD6OKc9u8/resources/qshsy3lVaU/2020-10-07_2-55-46.jpg (2020-10-07_2-55-46.jpg)

We will send an email from our Google Ads Manager Account requesting that you grant us with access. This email will go to the email address that is connected to your Google Ads account.

The email will look like this:

https://malcolm-en-gb.s3.eu-west-1.amazonaws.com/instances/MpD6OKc9u8/resources/0mjr8eByHz/account-access-email-1.jpg (account-access-email-1.jpg)

Please press "Accept Request"

From here, you will be prompted to log in to your Google Ads account.

Go to your Tools & Settings > Access and Security

https://malcolm-en-gb.s3.eu-west-1.amazonaws.com/instances/MpD6OKc9u8/resources/7HfA7c6hQS/2020-10-07_2-42-35.jpg (2020-10-07_2-42-35.jpg)

In here, you'll see a pending invite from Solutions 8 - Google Partner

Hit Accept and we will get notified

After we receive access to your account, it typically takes us 3 to 4 business days to complete a full evaluation.

Should you choose to engage Solutions 8 for regular Google Ads management, we'll need to perform this process a second time in order to transfer your account access from our review account to our management account.

Question 2

How do you track leads who call my business?

Accepted Answer

Most agencies will count a call that lasts 45 seconds or longer, for example, as a conversion. But we try to minimize false leads by hiring a designated team to listens to the calls that come in from an ad and give it a score. This also gives us the added bonus of helping us to uncover any issues that might be negatively affecting conversion rates during the calls (like an automatded answering machine that is confusing people, for example, or low quality leads who are asking for something different than what your business sells, etc.).

We use a platform called Call Tracking Metrics to help us record incoming calls and determine which were true leads.

What Is Call Tracking Metrics (CTM), and Why Do You Absolutely Need It?

Record, measure and listen to the calls your advertising efforts generate in real time! All phone call data is seamlessly linked to your Google Analytics, making it easy to define your exact ROI from your ad campaigns.

Here's how it works:

We generate a tracking number that will magically appear on your website instead of your real number only when someone has recently clicked on an ad. We generate another tracking number that will appear on the mobile ads as an ad extension, and ad leads will click on this number directly from the ad on their phone and their phone will dial the number, which will, of course, redirect them to your real number.
When either of these scenarios happen, someone from your business answers the phone and engages the prospect in conversation. The call will be recorded. We have a call rater who listens to every call, determines whether the person who made the call is an actual lead who is expressing interest in your product/service, and then rates it as a lead or not.
We are also able to see some very useful information about each call:

What page of your website the individual was on when they called
What keyword they used to land on your website
Which campaign generated that user
whether users were experiencing a challenge when attempting to place an order. So, that is a great QA check.

After that, we will import any of the leads who made the call from the website into Google Ads to attribute the conversion back to the day the person interacted with the ad(s).
If the call was made from the ad extension on the mobile ad, then it will be automatically counted as a lead only if the call lasted 30 seconds or longer. Google does this automatically because there is no functionality to import them (since they made a call directly, there is no tracking ID number, which is called a GCLID).

Here's the most important piece: After we listen to the conversation to access whether or not the lead was good or not, we go into your Google AdWords account and score the lead. This gives Google a lot of great data to work with.

If the lead was of poor quality, Google will limit the amount of times the ad gets shown to the same type of person.
If the lead was great, Google will show your ads to similar people who fit that leads profile.

End result? You get more conversions for a better cost.

***Please note that we pay for your Call Tracking Membership when we manage your advertising campaigns. The only cost to you is the monthly cost per number (In the US it is usually $1.50/number) and the cost per minute, which is usually less than $0.05 per minute.

Here is a screenshot of all the information you can receive about where exactly a call was coming from.

**Testing Your Magic Number*Once you or your vendor has setup the magic number on your website, you can test it to make sure it's working. Here's how: Open an incognito window and go to: [place URL here]/?gclid=test (i.e. yourwebsite.com/?gclid=test). You should see the magic number instead of the real number.

Question 3

How are you different from other agencies?

Accepted Answer

Our Qualifications and Experience:

We’ve been successfully at this since 2006
Google Ads certified
Hubspot Certified Partners
Digital Marketer Certified Partners
Google Ads Partners
Our Ads team is a Google Ads Premier Partner
Forbes Agency Council Members
Named one of the Best Digital Marketing Agencies in Phoenix by Expertise
We are digital marketers; however, we specialize in PPC
...and get a load of our case studies

Our Tracking and Reporting Methods:

We only use Google Analytics and Google Data Studio
Monthly reporting and tracking methods are easy to understand
We never use proprietary reporting or dashboards where data can be manipulated or hidden

Our Communication, Pricing, and Transparency:

You always maintain administrative ownership of your accounts
There is always a primary contact in charge of your campaign (i.e. a dedicated client manager)
We have clear communication schedules
We are clear on the work you need to contribute (and what your time investment will be)
Our fees are transparent and there are no long-term contracts

Our Strategy, Setup, and Tools:

We have a rock-solid onboarding process
We take the time to understand your business before offering a solution
We offer a marketing strategy in addition to tactical, campaign-based recommendations
We are clear about the tools and software we use
We don’t use automated tools to manage our campaigns — everything is done manually

Our Culture:

We work with clients who reflect our values and work ethic
We have the brand recognition necessary to pull in (and retain) top talent
We care. A lot.

Question 4

Why is my cost per click so high?

Accepted Answer

Having a high CPC (Cost-Per-Click) usually stems from competiting against many other competitors going for the same targeted keywords.

We can break this down for you by going to your "Auction Insights" and showing you what competitors are targeting the same keywords you are, and where they are on the SERP (Search Results Page) relative to your position.

Generally, here at Solutions 8 we aim to give you the highest ROAS (Return on Ad Spend) possible. This means we target keywords that are most likely to lead to conversions (Phone Calls, Purchases, Form Submissions, etc.).

If these profitable keywords also have high competition and high CPC, we need to "play the game" and bid competitively to appear near the top of the page to attract the most likely to convert customers that are looking for your products & services.

Our initial strategy is to start with targeting the bottom of the page until we can gather enough click-through data and conversion data to identify patterns.

Once we have a sense of which keywords are going to be effective, we might decide to bid competitively one a handful of them to appear at the top of the page, since we'll have the data to make us confident that it will be worth the risk to purchase those expensive clicks.

Question 5

What time period should I use to judge ad performance?

Accepted Answer

It's tough to look at things on a week-to-week basis. Our team aims for hitting the ROAS goal on a month-to-month basis. Performance is intentionally bumpy throughout the month because we do things like using the Stair-Step Method to push the algorithm to grow, or testing small changes, etc.

Question 6

Why shouldn't I judge the performance of each campaign individually?

Accepted Answer

It is tough to look at a single campaign's performance. Our team views account performance holistically. This is because campaigns often interact with the same leads/customers and depending on the attribution model, those conversions can get divided up in a way that makes one campaign look worse than it really is.

Question 7

How did you create the estimated projections in the action plan?

Accepted Answer

Using tools such as Google Keyword Planner, iSpionage, SpyFu, and SEMrush, we craft a keyword strategy.

Next, we:

Add the total monthly impressions of those keywords
Divide that number by a standard 2% click-through rate
Multiply that by the keywords’ average cost-per-click

This will give you a total amount of monthly leads/sales and cost-per-lead/sale.

Question 8

Is my branded campaign stealing all my traffic from organic search?

Accepted Answer

In some instances, yes.

If you have a good organic ranking and good organic traffic, branded campaigns can steal your organic traffic. The way to subvert this is to bid very low ($0.05 per click) so it's not costly.

**But, the pros far outweigh the cons: **

First, running a branded campaign protects your brands from competitors.

The first four spots on the Google search engine results page are all Google Ads listings. So, competitors who bid on your name can show as the first listing.

And because the highest you can rank organically is #5 on the page, all your organic traffic in this case would end up seeing your competitors first.

Let’s keep in mind that the #1 spot on Google has an average 20% click-through rate. So, competitors who bid on your name can be detrimental to your brand.

Suffice to say, you should always want to be #1 on Google for your brand name.

Next, running a branded campaign gives us the ability to see what keyword a user searched to get to your site (before leaving and coming back to search your brand name next).

This allows us to bid efficiently on keywords that introduce your brand to the masses, and also brings them back to the site to convert.

Question 9

What's The Downside Of A Too-High ROAS Goal?

Accepted Answer

The higher the ROAS, the less of the market you can capture.

If you want to have a higher return, you need to spend less and make more.

Here’s why. In traditional sales funnels, we always have folks at the “bottom of the funnel” (people who are ready to buy) and folks at the “top of the funnel” (people who aren’t ready to buy yet).

Those who aren’t ready to buy are going to be more expensive. They’ll need to click on two or three ads before converting. Some of them won’t ever convert.

There's also people who will have a lower average cart value than others. So if you tell the algorithm, “I only want those who are cheap to acquire and who will spend a lot of money with me,” then you’re cutting out part of your market.

This is why a high ROAS goal will limit your ad spend and stop the account from growing.

The goal should be to choose the ROAS that’s just right (not too high and not too low) and try to maintain that ROAS while growing spend––gathering conversion patterns, optimizing the settings, keywords, product titles, etc.)

For further explanation, check out this video:

Question 10

Can You Join Our Company Slack Channel?  (...Or Other Communication/Project Management Channels)

Accepted Answer

We take communication seriously. And that’s why we don’t join external client communication channels or project management applications (like Slack, Ryver, Asana, Basecamp, or TeamWork).

Here’s why:

1. Juggling channels is inefficient

Each of our client managers may work with dozens of clients at a time. So you can imagine that joining every client’s Slack channel would get a bit noisy; not to mention each client uses a different platform type, which would result in a lot of clutter.

2. We have rock-solid processes inside our own agency

From onboarding to account setup to ongoing management, our communication processes are about as efficient and streamlined as it gets.

We have automations and purposely-redundant methods in place to ensure each client account is managed with the sharpest eye.

Which brings us to our final point:

3. Limited access and workflow

Each client is assigned a powerhouse team dedicated to their account: a client manager, a specialist, a backup specialist, and two strategists.

To provide the best service, client managers frequently rope a specialist or strategist into conversations with the client.

However, if a client manager joins a client's external communication channel, it is nearly impossible to rope in those other team members—and it is similarly clunky to forward client information out to the rest of the team.

With our communication systems, we can move efficiently, tie automations to our emails, and allow access to our entire team.

We prioritize frequent and meaningful communication

We try to set clear expectations early on regarding our time and yours.

While adding your client manager to your internal Slack channel might seem like the best way to reach us, our policy to stick with internal communication processes actually results in more availability to speak with you and higher-quality communication.

As always, we’re happy to chat with you about any questions or concerns. Reach out anytime.